@bolbteppa But we have the plus term that corresponds to particles, which disallow this disaster to happen?

Not sure what that means

Seriously?

wtf, SE?

And an animated ad, to boot

-__-

eeww

commercialism is a necessary evil

@EmilioPisanty See e.g. meta.stackexchange.com/q/329547/263383 for one entrance into the long string of Meta.SE posts about that

@SirCumference why is chemistry kicking the poor student?

also, nobody actually uses that wresting move in real life :P

@ACuriousMind Damn. It's significantly worse than I thought.

@EmilioPisanty Don't worry, it's just some tool for tracking and fingerprinting of users. :-| meta.stackexchange.com/a/331963/271002

Have to match the right users to the right ads to maximize ad profit I guess. Then there’s cisecurity.org/blog/malvertising

> practices and attitudes that are concerned with the making of profit at the expense of quality. "the issue of creeping commercialism in schools"

@danielunderwood How old is that blog that it recommends keeping "Flash" and "Java" updated instead of permanently disabled? :P

yup, get with the times cuz they be a changin' :-)

@Loong precisely.

it pains me to be that blunt but it needed to be said.

+1

no pains, no gains

@ACuriousMind but you gotta have those for the 15 year old corporate software that will never be updated!

I think I’ve also seen some java web app physics visualizations, but I usually just run away like a sensible person

@EmilioPisanty "who're you gonna believe, me or your lying eyes/ears"

I'm reminded of this line by Gene Wilder from The Frisco Kid: "Come here little chicken. [...] I don't want to hurt you. I just want to make you kosher!"

nice

seems like there's a few different audio issues, though

one is Google ads serving ads which are overly invasive---audio, animations, memory, etc.

the other is ads in general which exploit your audio system in order to do tracking

one is intended to force content -onto- you, whereas the other is intended to extract content -from- you

both are scuzzy

@Semiclassical none of them are OK

sure. it's a distinction without a difference as far as being appropriate goes

@EmilioPisanty Not the first time that Stack Overflow is lying.

Not that I advocate that behavior, but isn’t that the cost of using a service that’s provided for free and supported by ads?

As far as the SE community is concerned, I think the fingerprinting is the bigger, more important issue. But personally, I'm not that concerned about tracking, but I do object to unwanted content. I don't get many GBs per month, and I don't want to waste them on damn ads.

the fingerprinting is the more insidious one

Definitely

the other is more just plain obnoxious

@danielunderwood Well, I can just turn on my adblocker, so no, it's not the cost.

@danielunderwood "the cost of using a service" is a pretty insulting metric to have on the table

The only reason they can get away with running these terrible ads at all is because most people don't use adblockers.

showing ads to one-time visitors -- I'm not a fan but I'm not opposed to it either

I'm ok with unobtrusive relevant ads. If the ads waste my bandwidth, I'll use an adblocker. What's the point of serving ads if people are just going to block them?

it does raise a question about websites in general: would they remain financially viable if everyone used an adblocker?

tracking and other malware, regardless of who it's being shown to -- no. that's not "the cost of" anything.

@Semiclassical would everyone use an adblocker if they ran ethical and appropriate ads?

(i'm not saying whether the state of affairs is appropriate, mind---I'm just wondering to what extent the current status quo relies on it)

@Semiclassical They would have to actually curate their ads so that they can convince their userbase to exempt their site from the blocker.

@danielunderwood as for "the cost of running a service" for contributing users -- ooooooooooh, hell no.

I've already paid SE for the server time

many times over

look

But as far as I understand, SE is not even mostly supported financially by these ads, so that's a red herring

@EmilioPisanty ah that’s an excellent point. SE wouldn’t be able to exist without active users that give quality answers

It boggles my mind that SE is running ads on anybody with >1k rep

one could probably parallel this with Youtube and the extent to which big media companies get highlighted by algorithms over regular content creators

@ACuriousMind This is specifically for SO and a bit old, but is this not accurate? Though considering the type of ads you guys are seeing, it’s at least inaccurate in the types of ads it mentions stackoverflow.blog/2016/11/15/…

@danielunderwood Maybe not. But they've amassed a huge amount of good answers, so maybe they aren't so concerned about that now. On SO, plenty of the old experts have stopped answering, or at least are a lot less active in answering now. I've hardly answered anything in almost a year, although I still cast close & delete votes.

But there's an endless stream of clueless newbies asking & answering... Some of those questions are ok, lots are dupes, heaps are rubbish that need closing.

the magic/ cursed word is monetization... how is SEs cashflow/ revenue/ business model doing? reminds me of this...

I can't see how an ad for a house is even vaguely relevant to a physics site.

@PM2Ring "you've finished your phd, now go into industry so you can buy a house"

housing is the highest price wherever you go. It's mainly for a private place to sleep and take a shower. There are probably public shower rooms in some places which can be freely used, but there are no public bedrooms. If you can hang on a tree like a monkey to sleep, you can save a lot of money while traveling to a lot of places.

@Semiclassical I navigated away from that ad and it didn't reload when I returned, so I didn't see where that realtor is based

if Blackthorn means the one in Bicester, UK, near Oxford, then showing that ad in Spain is kind of stupid

"get it before Brexit happens"

Heh, Brexit.

I got a job offer from a project in the UK recently.

After they told me their salary offer, I checked on one of these “48 Things British People Say And What They Actually Mean” sites what I should write in my reply.

> With the greatest respect …

🍿🇬🇧🇪🇺

(rendering obviously device-dependent)

lolz

yeah, that one was great fun